Newsroom: Project Areas

Unstructured childhood play is endangered. The Alliance works with organizations and individuals from many disciplines to promote public awareness of the importance of play to children’s healthy development—and to the joy of living at any age. The project’s goals are to restore play and hands-on learning in kindergarten and preschool; to introduce playwork to park and recreation programs, children’s museums, zoos, and other play spaces; to promote unprogramed free play in nature; and to work for inclusive play so that children of all abilities can fully partake of its multiple benefits.

Fool’s Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood,published by the Alliance in 2000, sparked a national debate that is still going on. Parents, educators, and policymakers around the world have used Fool’s Gold and the Alliance’s 2004 follow-up report, Tech Tonic: Towards a New Literacy of Technology, to ask searching questions about the potential dangers of a high-tech childhood. Our goal is more balanced and reasoned public discourse about the stunning changes that technology has created in modern childhood.

Marketing to children has proliferated wildly since it was deregulated by Congress in the 1980s. Approximately $15 billion is spent each year marketing toys, food, and entertainment to children. Children under 19 themselves spend $200 billion per year; children under 12 influence another $500 billion per year in family spending. No longer limited to TV ads, marketers now continually bombard children with ploys in their homes, neighborhoods, and schools. The Alliance partners with 25 other organizations in the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.

Public schools have seen a dramatic increase in standardized testing as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and, more generally, public acceptance of testing as an equitable way to make schools "accountable." The new tests invariably carry high stakes—that is, the results are linked to serious consequences for students, teachers, and schools. Most Americans believe that linking test results to rewards and punishments is an effective way to force schools to improve, even though research indicates that using tests in this way has the opposite effect, worsening academic performance and increasing dropout rates.

NCLB currently requires tests starting in third grade. But the latest research (see Crisis in the Kindergarten, below) indicates that standardized testing has become a major activity in the earliest grades, including kindergarten, in spite of serious doubts about its validity. The Alliance for Childhood has called for a rethinking of the current emphasis on standardized testing in a statement signed by, among others, four of the country's leading child psychiatrists -- Robert Coles and Alvin Poussaint of Harvard Medical School; Marilyn Benoit, past president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry; and Stanley Greenspan.

In the months following September 11, 2001 the Alliance created several resources about educating children for peace, including a list of ten simple but effective actions that families and schools can take. Educating for Peace has been reprinted in many publications.

In May 2003 the Alliance hosted a briefing on childhood obesity for the U.S. Senate at the request of Senator Mary Landrieu. Presenters included Dr. David Ludwig of HarvardMedicalSchool and Children’s Hospital in Boston, a school chef from Vermont, and representatives from the Urban Nutrition Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania, which teaches nutrition and gardening in inner-city schools in Philadelphia.

In its work on restoring childhood play, the Alliance notes evidence that children burn far more calories during active play, especially outdoors, than in sedentary activities. There is also evidence that strongly links time spent in front of TV and computer screens with increased risk of obesity.